PERFORMANCE MEASURES
Should Response Time Be
A survey of Pinnacle thought leaders' opinions
F
or decades many EMS systems have gauged performance
by measuring how fast they respond to emergencies. With
citizens expecting a quick response and limited data on
other aspects of performance, response time became one
of the few ways to assess the quality of an EMS system.
In recent years, however, many industry leaders have begun to
question the benefit of measuring and evaluating systems based only
on response times. Shaving seconds or even minutes off response
times seems to benefit only a small subset of clinical conditions. At
the same time, meeting response-time standards can cost communi-
ties hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet community officials and
the public often still expect rapid responses to every call—and the
media frequently points out when those expectations are not met.
With payers looking for ways to tie reimbursement to quality,
measuring the effectiveness and efficacy of EMS will soon be
more critical than ever. At this year's Pinnacle EMS Leadership
Forum, leaders of the EMS industry will gather to discuss the
most critical issues they face today, including the importance of
performance improvement and the EMS Compass initiative to
develop a system of performance measures. The one performance
measure that gets the most attention—good and bad—is response
time. We asked several Pinnacle faculty members to address these
questions: Are response times a good measure of an EMS system's
performance? Should EMS agencies continue to design systems
around response-time goals? Here (edited for length and clarity)
are their answers.
46 JUNE 2015 | EMSWORLD.com